A House made of Straw
by Yaomi's Ink
Summary: Character insight: What can you do when your home has been compromised?  What is a home anyways?


Disclaimer: I do not own the character in this story, but I greatly thank the great JK Rowling for creating them.

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It was past midnight, I knew, when I woke out of my slumber to a darkened room. The windows were thrown wide open, gauze curtains blowing in a wind that sounded like the cries of the muggles who did not understand why we were doing this to them. I'm not sure I ever really understood it myself. However, for me it was never about them except that now I could hear their voices in the haunting wind. Shadows writhed on the walls of the expansive room as the branches outside fought their own battle to keep the hopeful light of the full moon at bay.

You were sitting there in the window, your outline peeking out from behind the twisting sheets. Before I would have been surprised that you had stayed here with me (and why wouldn't you have? This was your house), but now I felt only sorry. A heaviness that spread from my chest to the tips of my fingers. And I see your own delicate fingers resting in your lap and long for the feel of them on me. I wonder if it's too late now. Here there is no love, lust, or light. There is only this heaviness weighing us down and the silence that threatens to tear me apart.

"Draco," I murmur. And your hand, translucent in the light of a dim moon, twitches but doesn't move. And your eyes, those of melted steel, linger on the trees surrounding the estate of lords and princes, linger where they lingered night after night previous to this night. And the softest moonlight strands brush your cheeks and neck, and when did your hair get so long? and it all so resembles Rumplestlitzskin, me in the dark cave and the beautiful tragic prince kept captive by his family, that I wonder for the briefest moment that maybe spinning gold from straw could work. And we would be out of here, far and away, basking in the beauty of the wealth that we created for ourselves.

But you refuse to turn around, eyes lost to a world that must be better than this one. All we ever had was straw, from the beginning to the end, and the big bad wolf was on his way, was already here gathering wind for his big bad breath to blow our straw house down.

"Draco," I say again, and this time your eyes do flicker away from the forest, and you hold your ghost-like hand out for mine. But as I reach you, my dark hand lightly touching yours, you turn your eyes back to the forest and hold still again. And with this small acknowledgement, I am satisfied because it's too late to argue, though I want your attention on me. It's too late for anything. And I sigh, grasping your other hand from your lap to entwine our fingers and I bury my nose in the back of your neck and wait.

"I wasn't always sure it was real, you know," you murmur. So softly, nothing more than the wind rustling through the trees of a discontent ghost. "You walked out of the darkness, insubstantial." Your perfect lips were barely moving.

"A wanderer," I whisper in your ear. I felt like the smallest noise would shatter this night we could never have back. "Finally coming home, Draco." I can feel you laugh, silent like the rest of the night. You tell me that this was never home. And I know it wasn't. A home was a place you could always go back to, a place you were supposed to feel safer than anywhere else. A home was a place where you could feel love unlike anywhere else. Home to you was our dorm room in Hogwarts, where we could lay in my bed for hours just talking. Home was where I pushed you up against the wall in the boy's restroom and kissed you the first of many kisses to come. Home to me was wherever you were, whether it be Hogwarts, your family's estate, or little grandma's house in the woods. You turn around and kiss me.

This will all end upon our awaking. The wolf's already here, and I have to wonder how the hell he got inside. He's destroying us from the inside, the little girl already knows what's to happen to her as she sits silently in the corner of the room, without tears and screams and her grandmother to comfort her. Already knows. And he smiles at her as I bury myself desperately into Draco's shoulder. It's okay to feel a little scared.

In the morning our straw house will be blown down and the little girl will be gone, a smiling wolf needing more more more sitting in the bed in the middle of the room. There will be no gold for us; we never had any to begin with. This insubstantial wanderer will shatter and the silver will melt to mix with something else. Something dirty and corrupt. But this is all for the morning and it's still dark out as we make our way to your bed.

Your arm is wrapping itself across my back to rest on my thigh and my lips are brushing your porcelain jaw, made real for the last time tonight. In the morning our world will shatter and everything we ever wanted, hoped for, and loved will be replaced with feral smiles, and the straw we hid as gold will be revealed.

And so we both go to sleep and hope to God that we don't wake up.

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A character insight for a much longer story that is still in the editing stage.


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